"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
For the first time in over a hundred years, her eyes are open.
She sees them – all of them, and everything around them – and yet she has become so accustomed to relying on her other senses that for a moment, it had almost been too much. To see, to hear, and to smell – everything was too loud, and much too bright, and when Carnage had left her, she had remained in the dark. She was used to it; something she never thought she would say. The shadows and the night were the closest thing she had to the world she had become adapted to, and so it was still in the veil of darkness that she kept herself shrouded in. Away from the rest of them, away from Skellig, and away from the glaring light.
But the stars – they are enough to draw her out.
She can see the silver light of the moon as it strains through the trees up above, and she follows the path it spills across the ground, until she emerges from the treeline, a flash of white in the dark. She hardly notices as her legs carry her to the river’s edge, her face tilted upwards. For the first time, she ignores the sounds of others milling around nearby, realizing that she didn’t have to acknowledge everyone to make sure they were aware that the eyeless ghost next to them wasn’t completely oblivious to their presence. Instead, her gaze remains focused on the blue-black sky above, the shimmer of the stars reflecting in her newborn, almost sable colored eyes. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, there is a worry – a nagging feeling, his words still twisting in her head. She has ran over them so many times, until their sharp edges had been worn smooth from the way she had been flipping, and turning, and dissecting the entire encounter. He never did anything for free; she already knew this. What she wasn’t sure of, however, was the enigmatic way in which he had left her, instead of just saying – or taking – what he wanted right then.
A sound nearby pulls her attention from the skies above, listening carefully for what lay beneath the rush of water over rock, and the wind through the trees. And when she sees him – still such a strange thing for her to be able to do – she is again flooded with memories that had long lay dormant. First Ashhal, and then Carnage – and him now, too, it seems, and she cannot help but to wonder why does she keep finding her way back to things that should have been laid to rest years ago.
And more importantly, why does she always walk towards the chaos, instead of leaving it behind.
“All of the ghosts of my past are coming out to haunt me, it seems,” she says with a simper that spreads like a whisper across her pale lips, her stark white body coming to rest easily alongside his. Through the strands of her silver forelock, she peers up at him, his name still fitting so perfectly on her tongue when she says, ”Hello again, Eight.”
For the first time in over a hundred years, He doesn’t give a damn about anything.
The land is riddled with ghosts; those that are here, and those that are gone. He has found Beqanna wanting and waiting - adrift in the universe with strangers milling on her lands. So many faces streamed by him, unknown and new, like fresh pink skin waiting to be marked and marred. So many ghosts lurking behind that bleary wall of life/death, here/there, then/now. He had been gone far too long to be known around here anymore. (And perhaps, that is just the way He likes it. Forget the things He’s done, the name He has picked out for Himself, the way hHe has ruled and roiled and ruined.) For the first time since He could stand - He does not give a damn about anything. Not war, nor usurping crown; raising a kingdom or raising hell; fucking or fighting.
How strange - to feel something, be something, that you have not been in far too long (or ever, maybe). You, His lily white apparition, can see again. The world is your kaleidoscope, no longer are there shadows where faces should be. No longer is sound the beacon of what is where and which step to take. No longer are you in an endless shifting night, adrift in the unknown, marked forever as an invalid and incapable. No, no, now you can see.
Is it any different than before? Is it an assault to your eyes? Were you expecting something different -- better? Brighter? Beyond the scope of this small rustling river and the listless souls temporarily inhabiting it? Are you standing there thinking this is it? Of course, this isn’t the first time the wool has been pulled from your eyes - you could see before. But were you really seeing? Or were you taking it for granted -- not taking advantage of something the gods can give and take away.
He knows you are coming. He can see it (a sense that is in no way new to Him) in the milky ripple of the dark sky; your translucent body trekking none so timidly (bolder now, with your vivid vision in tact-- your eyes seeing what wasn’t there before) from that womb of a cave, into the thick, black night. Is it only under the blanket of tenebrose night that you feel secure enough to come out? An alabaster baby, shedding the cocoon of to create her world again. That’s what you are doing -- no? One hundred years of darkened solitude, building Beqanna brick by brick in the cavern of your mind. And now -- now you are building it again, piece by glaring piece, the truth unshielded now that you can see. “Hello Ryatah.” There is no surprise as you moor softly next to Him, a small slip bumping in the waves of the vast ocean. ”You’ve come out to play again then, hm?” He does not turn to look at you - there is nothing new for him to see there. He knows the curve of your body, the hot white stretch of your skin, the snowy tangle of your mane; he does not need to see you to know you.
∞
and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in
It had taken her awhile, at first, to learn the differences in Beqanna. When the earth had first shifted, when mountains had moved and forests were leveled and other lands had risen from their ashes, she had been forced to adapt. Everything that she had known previously had changed, and her once deft and confident — albeit blind — steps were once more cautious, unsure. It had taken her years to truly memorize this place, and just like that, the familiarity was stripped from her. And now, with her eyes, it is like having to learn it all over again. The image that she had painted in her darkness does not completely match what she actually sees.
Everything is different. Everyone here looks different. Most of them are strangers; a glaring reminder of what she has missed.
But some have remained the same. And though they are toxic and release poison into her veins, she still relishes in the simple fact that they are familiar, even more so now that all the changes are laid before her open eyes.
He is the same too, in some ways. He is still dark and enigmatic, never tilting his head to look at her. Funny, how she never would have known that before; it is little things like that, she is discovering, that makes her feel like perhaps she never mastered her disability quite the way she had initially thought.
”I’m always out,” and there is a laugh threaded in her words, referencing to the fact that she is trying to make Tephra her home, and yet she can’t seem to make herself stay. Some parts of her will never change, it seemed — no one had a strong enough hold on her anymore to keep her rooted. Not even the one she loved most. ”And you? You just couldn’t stay away?”
When age is obsolete - everything is always changing; nothing remains the same. Beqanna was not what it had been - she has lost lands and kingdoms, created new ones, turned land to ash and dust where memories once were. Nothing matches up anymore - there is no familiarity here (though the name, BeqannaBeqannaBeqanna remains as the meaning of ‘home’). He had never truly made a home here, though. Not for quite some time, anyway. He did not hold ties to much - children, family, mistresses, land. Eat, sleep, fuck, and flee - He had no need to stay any further. Wreck havoc, plant His seed in the womb, juggle a crown - and leave.
Everything is different when He comes back each time.Or is everything still the same? Perhaps it is like you- you have learned, memorized, traced the tracks of Beqanna - but when you open your eyes, what you remembered is now all different. It is familiar - the smell, that mountain, the gurgle of the river - but it is different. These are not the lands you know, the crowns you remember, the equine you once mingled with. It is all different.
What a disadvantage it is to live forever - everyone will always seem so old (and so new). Everyone will die in the end - but you will wait it out. You will disappear and return to find the corpses of those you loved (hated, lorded over, birthday) - gonegonegone. Is that why you made ‘friends’ with magicians and immortals, white washed woman? Could you no longer bear loss rifting your world in two? Were you tired of shackles of emotion tying your heart so tightly to the ground? If you befriend those who are gods, you will never lose them.
It is almost strange for Him to see you looking back - as if each expression on your face is foreign now. Eyes bring a part of the soul to the surface - they are filling the gap where so much used to be. How does it feel to see yourself how others saw you? How does it feel to see the parts of others you hadn’t seen before? Does He feel different to you now that you can see him whole? Is this what you imagined?
You are almost coy in your words (forever facetious, forever coquettish) - a playful banter underneath the surface. You are perhaps one of the few still here who could look at the dark magician and see something playful underneath (it is all too serious, too fearful for everyone else. “I bore too easily, you see.” It is a simple truth. There was too little to do, too many options when the world is at your fingertips. Somehow, some way, He always ends up back here. “You look different.” It is blunt, direct ; not a question, but a statement.
∞
and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in
For several years, she had been quiet. Her blood was still here, in the veins of those she didn’t know, attached to names she has never heard and stemming from even more names that were still strangers. But she wasn’t one of them; she didn’t belong anymore, if she ever had. No one ever paid much attention to the ghostly waif that drifted on the fringes, and she rarely – never – made an effort to amend that. She had accepted that her time had come and gone, and although the reasons that death would not take her (and keep her) still remained unknown, she didn’t contest it. She let the monotony settle into her soul like lead, she let herself drown in her own apathy, and maybe that is why every time there is even a miniscule chance to feel something – anguish, agony, fear – she takes it, greedy and selfish and unconcerned of the consequences.
There are only a few that can even begin to stoke the embers that she kept dormant, and he was — sometimes — one of them. For now, though, she is still placid, and if there is something brewing beneath her skin and in the network of her veins when she looks at his dark face, she keeps it at bay. There were some that she would immediately plunge into the familiar game of cat-and-mouse, but he had always been one that she couldn’t quite figure out. He didn’t arouse the same fear that others did, even though he should — she supposed she just hasn’t been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of that side of him, yet.
”How lucky for the rest of us, then, that the world is so boring that you come back here,” spoken with another whisper of a laugh, and she meets his gaze with a curious tilt of her head in response to his last statement. ”It’s the eyes. They’re relatively new.” It has been so long that she isn’t even sure who knew her from before — a hundred or so years ago, when she wasn’t just simply the girl that Carnage blinded, when she was less than nothing but somehow still more herself than she ever would be again. She hardly even remembers that girl anymore, and it doesn’t surprise her when no one else does either.
